The most immediately convincing words out of the subject’s mouth in A Storm Foretold are when he is threatening the director. “Obviously,” says Roger Stone to Danish film-maker Christoffer Guldbrandsen at the end of an anti-Trump rant, “if you use any of that I’ll murder you.”
As Guldbrandsen notes earlier in the film, their relationship is complicated.
The 90-minute documentary follows Donald Trump’s longtime ally – friend, possibly, if either man is capable of friendship – and political adviser for three years from 2019 to 2022. Except, that is, for a short hiatus when Stone switches allegiance to another crew and cuts Guldbrandsen off, the stress of which surely contributes to the Dane’s ensuing heart attack. It’s a busy time for Stone. He splits his time between using diatribes on Infowars to inflame his boss’s base with a hatred for liberals – who, naturally, are in love with “rapist” Bill Clinton and his supposed accessory to the crimes, Hillary – and managing a manchild president who throws tantrums if he feels he is being managed at all. Stone describes, for instance, how, if he wants Trump to say something in particular, he tells him that he needs to use a line in a speech that he used brilliantly before. “Doesn’t matter if he never said it.” It’s one of several terrifying glimpses into the internal mechanics of Trump’s time in office and the scope of its – and his – inadequacies. Such is the destabilising force of these revelations that you start to feel almost grateful that there was someone recognisably politician-like in the mix. Stone is just as arrogant, vain, bullying and thuggish. But he has a genuine analytical intelligence running alongside the same populist touch, instinctive animal cunning and talent for geeing up a crowd that Trump has. You feel glad someone somewhere knows what they are doing, even if everything they are doing is awful and bent on destroying democracy. Like I say – it’s a very destabilising documentary.
We watch as Trump’s election campaign is investigated for interference by Russia and Stone goes on trial for allegedly covering up Trump’s various improprieties. He is convicted but his sentence is commuted by Trump, though Stone had been confident of a full pardon.
We follow Stone through 2020 as he prepares the backup plan for the increasingly likely event that Trump loses the election to Joe Biden: the “Stop the Steal” campaign that will, we know, culminate in a march on Capitol Hill on 6 January 2021 and an outbreak of violence that essentially amounts to an insurrection. He rallies the troops, especially the rightwing group known as the Proud Boys, who have appointed themselves his voluntary security force and seem to worship him with almost as much fervour as they do Trump himself. Stone strides on, dropping jokes about it being “Shoot a Liberal for Christ” day and, like a jovial barracuda, reckoning they should “fuck the voting – let’s get right to the violence”, advising crowds on “what you can do for the Republic”, turning truths into plausible lies and generally fostering the tension, conspiracy theories, fear and sense of powerlessness (“a thousand years of darkness” will follow a Democrat win) that fuels the Maga membership. When Biden does win, they are assured that Trump won and the lie falls on perfectly prepared ground. The march takes place, the Capitol is breached, lives are lost and hundreds injured.
Trump abandons Stone during the fallout. It turns out that a face contorting with rage is not just something that happens in books. In the back of Guldbrandsen’s car, Stone’s face twists and tics as if snakes are rising from his soul. He denounces Trump, says he will support impeachment charges against the “cocksucker” who “surrounded himself with morons … Fuck you and your abortionist bitch daughter.”
It’s a scene that, in the damage it potentially does to his cause – the preservation and exaltation of Roger Stone in the coming new New World – crystallises the question floating throughout the film: why did he agree to it? Why didn’t he get one of any number of patsies who would have been delighted with an all-access three years and delivered a pile of fawning goods at the end of it? What kind of documentary was he expecting from a serious film-maker such as Guldbrandsen? Did he think he could fool him or win him over? Does he actually believe in the cause and want it legitimised in the mainstream media? How deep do the arrogance and delusion run?
Guldbrandsen pushes him on little – that’s the price you pay for that all-access pass – though his voiceover generally clarifies his stance, or points up Stone’s latest hypocrisy. But, by the end of a film full of jaw-dropping footage of what seem to be very incriminating moments for Stone personally and Trumpism generally, it comes together as a terrifying testimony to the deliberate nature of the destruction of the literal and metaphorical fabric of US politics. It is also an even more terrifying poser of the question – what storms are yet to come?
• A Storm Foretold aired on BBC Four and is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK, and on Stan in Australia.
